Waiting (Version II)
by EleanorK
Summary: He lay with his arms over his head and she pressed his wrists to the bed. Liking him like that. His beard was scruffy on her face and he smelled like dish soap and she could feel him, already hard, beneath her. She liked that, too. - takes place between end of season 3 and beginning of season 4 - companion to Waiting (Version I)


Carol had a chorus in her head.

Don't think about that yet.

Don't remember.

Don't think about it.

Not now.

She had too much to do, anyway. It was almost easier to keep moving and doing, washing and hauling and sorting and chopping than anything else.

But the waiting was what she was bad at. When she finally stopped moving and went to lie down. Waited for sleep. Then everything she'd said she wouldn't think of returned to her. And she could only see her daughter, a flood of images, from her baby years until her last moments. All of them beautiful and vivid and so tainted with sorrow. There was no one alive who knew her daughter as she had. As she did. Not even her father had known. Nights, she felt like a container of nothing but her daughter. A container of Sophia, one that must not shatter. But one that couldn't hold it all. The regret. The misteps. The loss of the memories.

For once she felt fortunate to have so much work. It kept her from thinking about things she didn't want to examine too close. It kept her moving, further from that horrible day toward the future. Toward what, she wasn't sure. But lately, sleep was hard to come by. She was counting it good if she could sleep even a few hours in a row. Dropping off to sleep was impossible. And when she did, the sun would be up in the high windows and she'd feel like she'd slept one minute. Her body ached. Her head swam; she saw rings around objects at a distance. She was glad she wasn't on watch anymore; she was a danger to herself and the others.

So on Beth's birthday, after dinner when Maggie started making toasts and passing down a couple of bottles of wine around the table, she figured, why not. Maybe it'd help her sleep. And gulped some, every turn. The women were the only ones drinking - Maggie had some reason - and the guys all watched, yelling here and there in approval, and it was as much fun as could be had in their life, really. Beth's face was flushed red, and she led them in singing some dirty Irish song that had everyone, even Michonne, laughing, and by the time Carol got up from the table, she was pretty tipsy.

"Lemme get that for you," Daryl said, grabbing her plate and cup. "You gonna drop it." He put his hands on her shoulders, steadied her. He was smiling, in that sideways way of his. "Carol, getting her shine on. Well." He shook his head, walked back to the store room with the dishes. As she passed to use the sink to wash up, she saw all the guys were doing dishes, tonight. Which was strange. Seeing Rick with a dishtowel in his pocket and Daryl's hands in the bucket of suds. Glenn laughing and stacking the dried cups. Something was weird. Well, she was drunk. That was pretty unusual on its own.

She laughed with Beth and Maggie while they peed and brushed their teeth, and then went to check on Judith, who was sleeping in Herschel's cell that night. He nodded at her, smiled. Everyone was in such a good mood. She shouldn't question it. And after quickly undressing, she collapsed in her bunk, happily, easily falling into sleep.

But two hours later, she was awake. Not sick. Just awake. No dreams this time. Just wide, wide awake. And she had to pee. So much for wine doing the trick. She was cold and didn't feel like putting her boots on. She rolled over, hoping she could just ignore her bladder. Just fall asleep again. It was so frustrating, not being able to let go. Like not being able to orgasm.

She thought of Daryl's hands on her shoulders.

She put her boots on. Went as quietly as she could to the privy. Peed a gallon of wine. Then crept, knowing how easily Judith woke, how easily the others woke, to get a drink of water.

She thought of Daryl, smiling at her.

And then, she didn't think anymore. She just went direct to his cell, the one up top, on the far left, not far from the perch on the landing he used to call home. He didn't use a sheet over the door. He just laid there, asleep on his stomach, in his boots and fully-dressed. The crossbow on the floor beside him, one hand gripping his knife, and the thin prison blanket over him.

She sat beside him on the bed.

"What...Carol?" He was instantly awake. Turning. She put her hand on his shoulder to reassure him everything was okay.

He looked at her, a question.

And she didn't know what this was. What to say. And so she just pressed herself over him, her mouth on his mouth, and then kissing him. Like to quiet him. Though she knew she didn't have to quiet Daryl. He would have said something already if he was going to say it. He would have stopped it.

Thank god he didn't.

But he didn't grab her, either. He lay with his arms over his head and she pressed his wrists to the bed. Liking him like that. His beard was scruffy on her face and he smelled like dish soap and she could feel him, already hard, beneath her. She liked that, too.

Obviously Ed Peletier hadn't been much of a lover. Or a kisser. Or anything, really, but a violent selfish tyrant. So she felt even more gratitude when she let up on Daryl's wrists and he began to touch her back. So sweet and slow. Tender. With gratitude himself. To look at the man, to see him tracking or taking out walkers or even driving that stupid loud bike of his, you'd think he'd be all flash and quickness in bed.

But no. He was slow, savoring everything. His fingertips running along the seam of her shirt, pushing it up, just the slightest, until she got impatient and shrugged out of it. She swore he smiled a little at that and she felt a little shy. But the wine made her keep going. His hands, soft on her breasts, sweeping over the nipples until she gasped. Couldn't help it. He was so deliberate, each movement like he was reading her, figuring her out, just by touch. His palms curving along her waist, under her ribs. Tentative. Soft. Sweet.

Words she'd never use to describe Daryl Dixon.

She pushed up his shirt and he raised his arms to let her pull it over his head. Feeling his skin on hers was luxurious enough, but then he kissed her breasts, one, and the other. Again, with such caution, like he was trying to be polite. Like she'd jump up and smack him if he didn't do it just so. And the way he sighed, said, Mmmmm into her skin. Like he'd been waiting so long. She didn't even realize how long she'd been waiting to hear that sound from a man. Maybe her whole life.

Which made her bold. Made her want to jump start this. Made her push his hand down her panties and feel how wet she was. When he touched her wetness, he groaned. In a hurry, she made it so her jeans were down and he did the same with his, toeing off his boots at light-speed and before either of them could stop it or pause or make any preface to it, she was reaching and guiding him inside her. He was watching all of this like it was a movie, something not happening between them. To him. His eyes so wide in the dark above her.

When he was all the way inside her, he closed his eyes, and groaned. She stretched her legs wider. He was big. Bigger than Ed. Now it was her turn to smile. She reached up, her hands around his neck, running through the scruff of hair that needing trimming, watching him fuck her, watching him be slow, his eyes narrowed in concentration. Both of them breathing hard, him biting his lips.

She felt him tense, and thought it might be over, so another bold move. She pressed her own hand down there, right where she liked it, and started circling. Rubbing herself. She saw him glance toward her hand, like he was surprised. But then he groaned again, louder, like it was turning him on. And it turned her on, too. Very much. More than she'd ever been, doing this on her own, alone in bed. He dipped his head onto her breast and sucked.

And now he was faster, and harder, like he was losing control of himself and that's when she lost it, too. It all tumbled up on her and she came like nothing else in her life, just as he slammed up into her. She cried out, unable to stifle it, not caring how loud it was, and his eyes opened and a couple more strokes and he was undone, too, muttering her name.

"Goddamn," he said.

She couldn't open her eyes now, now that they were done. She felt his hand on her face, running down along her jaw. His lips soft on her cheek. Like he was thanking her. And then he crashed beside her, breathing hard.

"Goddamn," he said again. Softly. Like it was a dream and he was just waking up.

She gripped the blankets beneath her. Full of fear and happiness. Her body flushed with satisfaction. But not afraid to touch him. Not wanting to admit what she'd done. Not wanting to explain. Wanting to just fall asleep, his breath in and out right on her shoulder. She waited, then. Until his hand pressed against her belly, smoothing back and forth. Then slowed. Then he was asleep. And she was, almost, too. But she couldn't sleep here. She couldn't wake up here. After she could hear his breathing getting more ragged, in an almost-snore, she slipped out from his hand, gathered her clothes, and tip-toed back to her own bunk.

Maggie had to shake her awake.

"Carol? You feeling okay?"

She slowly sat up. Blamed it on the wine. Maggie looked at her funny, but Carol just rushed to dress and get down to making breakfast. Though she was not ready to see Daryl. See anyone, really. Because she felt so excellent. She thought it might show, seep out of her skin like light. She hadn't slept that unbrokenly in weeks.

Luckily, she missed Daryl at breakfast. And for the rest of the day, too. Because there was no way of knowing what she'd do when she saw him again. What if he didn't look at her?

And what if he did?

Don't think about it.

Not now.

So she didn't. Until dinner, when she caught him staring at her, across the table, where he ate standing up, alone. Tearing at a hunk of bread with his mouth. He looked away, first, then turned when someone came to speak with him. Carol's stomach lowered and she couldn't finish. She spent the rest of the meal washing up and then went to her bunk without a word to anyone. Worried someone would come after her. Him, in particular.

But then sleep didn't come. She laid there. For hours. Thinking of what a shit mother she'd been.

She should have looked for her child.

She should have left Ed.

She should have never had a baby with that monster to begin with.

This sent her upright, back into her boots. No pants.

Thinking of nothing but oblivion and Daryl Dixon's naked body. Daryl Dixon's cock inside her.

And then she was back in his cell. This time, less preamble than before. This time he was awake, wiping a bolt clean while he laid on his bunk. He turned down the lantern and stood to meet her. Not a word. Just his mouth on hers.

So that was how it was going to be, then. A good decision, she thought. Pushing him down to the bunk and climbing on top.

The third night, after she pushed him off the bunk so she could ride him better – she loved nothing better than being above him, him so deep inside her she could barely keep quiet, stop herself from trembling with happiness - he spoke.

"Carol, what about babies? We ain't using anything and…"

"I take care of it," she said. She had been taking pills since Maggie had brought her some. Knowing that she couldn't trust all the men coming into their group. Knowing she was weaker, couldn't protect herself against men, for a long time now. And not wanting to feed or clothe or carry the product of that weakness, either.

She imagined Daryl's baby, then. Blue eyes, just like his. Beautiful. That would be a child that would live protected, truly.

She shut her own eyes against tears. His hand, shy on her, wove up her soft wetness and pressed against her, right on her clit. She could have cried, then, how lovely he was, how much she needed this, and needed him, even his clumsiness. The gesture itself, nothing but pure generosity. Nothing but the honest raw effort she'd come to expect from him. Never in this way, but now that she could feel it, him pressing, rubbing, so gentle, so earnest, it only made sense that he would do this for her, too. Whatever he could.

She tipped her head back to enjoy it. And when she came, it shook her to her bones.

Almost every night she wanted to go him. She would have, every night. But she was too shy about needing it. She couldn't talk to him normally anymore, like she had before. She avoided him, kept herself busy to miss him. But the nights she didn't go, she spent hours looking up at the rusty springs of the bunk above her, regretting it. Wishing that he'd just come to her.

Those mornings, though, she vowed, bleary-eyed and raw, that she'd go to him that night. Go to him and get her pleasure – get off, she thought, with dirty shame and happiness – and be able to fall asleep into dreamless nothing. Get her reward of oblivion and sweet peace.

The nights she didn't come to him made her even more shame-filled than the ones she did. She felt she owed him some explanation, but because it was him, Daryl, the silent one who saw everything without it having to be explained to him, she couldn't. She wondered if he already knew what she was doing. She wondered if he would refuse her if knew. And then what would she do? Without him as an option?

One day after breakfast, he came to her. Stared at her. Like he figured she was playing some woman's game on him. It nearly sawed her in half, trying to decide what to do. How to act. How to see him, in full daylight, as the man she'd come to know and trust like no other, and think of him in the dark of his cell when they were together at night, making her body sing and pulse with pleasure she had only barely glimpsed at before this? She couldn't decide whether to toss herself at him or run the other direction. The rules with Ed had been clear. She had learned them well, grim as they'd been. But with Daryl she couldn't fathom it. Couldn't see a way through with him where any of this made sense.

Later, he swatted her on the butt while she mopped and she nearly died with shame, though it also pleased her, down deep. That, too, was shameful; loving the feeling of being so owned and marked by him.

Worst yet: that she would so easily forget her sorrow, her daughter, her one thing she was good at in this miserable world. How could she have any joy now? It seemed like a sin.

One she couldn't stop making.

One afternoon, before supper, she happened to overhear him with Glenn, saying he was going out hunting. She tensed as he said he'd be back by sunset. She avoided him so thoroughly now that she'd forgotten what it was like to know his comings and goings. Worry about him.

"Stay safe," they used to say to each other. But that was before she'd started this game.

Now they said nothing to each other.

And all she could do is imagine him not returning. Or imagine him returning, pawing at the fenceline in that other form. Not-Daryl. Like Not-Sophia. Dead to her, too.

She would walk out the gate defenseless and let them take her, if that happened. She would give it all up, then. For him. For this life of waking death.

Dinner prep happened, but she couldn't face eating. She looked for him to come scrambling back to the gate, but she didn't see him. And she couldn't wait like that. She didn't want to be that woman.

She was that woman.

She volunteered to fill up water buckets, then. Such an easy request; she'd done it a hundred times. But this time, she thought she would see him. Or she thought she would let it all go. Let herself be taken into the darkness of the forest. Into the mouths of the walkers. Into where there was no sleep or no memory.

But then she heard him, saying her name. And coming up, covered in blood and dirt, dragging a buck, and there was nothing she could do but get him safe. Get him inside, with his kill, and move on. Make the choice to live. Make the choice to be as strong as he was, the choice he seemed to make without thought. Had always made. She couldn't let him see that side, ever. Her weakness. Her disdain of the life he fought so hard for.

He wanted her to look at him; he wanted it so bad, she could see. Praise him. She used to do it; she used to talk to him all the time. She had ruined it, with this game now. With her silence.

Back in the gate, he kept his side of the silence, too. Stripping off his filthy clothes. Baring himself to her until she could no longer square it, being near him half-naked. The joy and the reality of him so close and so easily grasped. She hustled away; hid in the laundry area until she heard the shower go off and dinner get served. Then she slid to her bunk and cried as quietly as she could. Waiting for this nervousness to leave her. Waiting for sleep. Waiting for the courage to try to tell him all this. Would he even understand? She loved that his words were direct and clear; that he didn't fill up the sentences with all kinds of sentiment or bullshit. She wanted to speak his language, use it as fluently as he did, instead of all these troublesome words, tangled up in knots that would only make him shake his head.

If only she could see it like he did, so simply.

If only she could just sleep. If only.

And then she heard the steps. She heard, only because she was desperate to hear them. He knew how to be sneaky and quiet; it was just one reason among many why he was so valuable to them all. And he said her name and she knew it was over. She knew if he wanted her, that she would bare herself, give herself to him. She could never refuse.

But she also knew he would ask her things, flat-out. Want things. Want to be angry, maybe. Or want to expect things from her, too. Want a life that would mean she would feel that grief every time he left her sight. How could she live with him and without him, then? This level they lived on now was unbearable, unstable. Would either side be any better?

He said her name. Pushed aside the sheet. Stood there in those ridiculous red boxer shorts that Beth had laughed over one day while they did laundry. She sat up and he came to her, smooth as water.

He spoke. She spoke back. But his eyes said other things. His eyes said he wanted her. He had felt robbed and he wanted her. And she let him, because that was their silent bargain. Because she knew it would be good, if for only those moments. Even as she relented and let him take charge of it all. This was his reward for coming to her, she thought, as he turned her and entered her from behind so hard she thought she would come right there, pushing out his name from her throat in a sob. A moment later, he collapsed beside her.

After a few minutes, he spoke. Said he missed her at dinner. And she knew she had to be brave. Come out with it. So she tried to explain it, just a bit, how she worried. Not all of it; not why she worried.

And then he said it. Words that no one had ever said to her. Not even her husband.

"I'm in love with you," he said. Her back was to him, but the hair on the back of her neck stood up. She shivered.

"You gotta know it," he said.

She felt paralyzed by this. By what it meant. By how much she wanted it. By how happy she felt to hear it. By the panic that this, too, could be surely taken from her.

She rolled to face him and he kept talking. Wanting her in his bed. Every night. Wanting her every night and every morning, and not giving a damn who knew.

"I want you for mine," he said. And the tears came. Rained out. She couldn't stop it. She was a woman who cried easily and this was a world that didn't relent on that score.

She tried to explain. Kind of. Her nightmares. Her inability to sleep. Her insanity. It sounded weak. Partial. Feeble. She couldn't explain the haunting of the past that ate at her. Because how could she put that next to his own loss and justify it? She could not.

Daryl wasn't swayed. He was resolute in his decision and his love and this was terrifying in its clarity and sheer weight.

But he didn't feel the burden of that weight. Not in the slightest.

"It's settled," he said, simply. As if they'd picked out a shirt in a color they both liked. As if it'd been a matter of coffee or tea. Then, he kissed her. Like she was the most precious thing. She had never been anyone's most precious thing. Beyond her daughter's. But even that wasn't quite right. Sophia had been the precious thing, not Carol.

"Once you started coming to me, it was all over for me," he told her. "I ain't been the same since. You had to know that, girl."

She told him she was no girl and he seemed pleased at that. Started kissing her breasts. Sliding over her body, licking his way down, lower. He was getting tired of talking, she could see. She could feel him stirring down there, his length caught between their legs and now that she teased him about the stupid boxer shorts, she could get a glimpse of what this would mean. That it was settled.

That she would wake with him and sleep with him and make love with him and be his. And that she would learn, somehow, to keep believing in life with him. Just him now. No one else. Nobody else wore the dust of the past like he did; he was heavy with it, just like her. But he had memories of Sophia, too. He could help carry some of them. And she could see how he'd lighten it for her. With his body and his courage. He could do it. Just as she could for him. Because they did no one any good hoping against failure. They could only come together like this, in the dark and in the light, and be open, at peace, with the possibility of the end. It had ever been so; before this life began, it had been just as true that death lurked everywhere they moved.

When he moved his mouth to kiss her between her legs, right at the spot she loved, the spot he'd come to know after all these secretive nights they'd spent together, saying he was going to give her the sweetest dreams, she knew he was good as that promise. Good as his word.


End file.
